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Talk:Types of Magic
About the classification tree I assumed that "Fields" was intended to be a first-level branch, equal to "Spheres" and "Paradigma," right? Also, on a purely aesthetic point... perhaps it would look a bit better to get rid of the "Classification schemes" entry and promote "Spheres", "Fields" and "Paradigma" to first-level, renaming them "Classification according to Spheres system", "Classification according to Fields system" or similar. No real change in content, only in the look of the tree and formatting of the headings. I assume Addiab will put in a lot more stuff, and, well, sixth- or seventh-level headings are probably to get hard to tell apart eventually. IF it's even supported, I mean. HTML goes only to H6, after all. No reason to assume MediaWiki goes deeper than that. And I think what I'm calling "first-level heading" is technically equivalent to H2. So, it probably doesn't go deeper than five-equal-signs. --Sir Lee 03:19, April 29, 2010 (UTC) I see your point about the too deep hierarchy, and splitting it up that would have fit when I started this thing and it was basically DnD spheres/schools, -magic, and stuff I originally wanted to call schools of magic (but that term was already used for the next section and wouldn't have fit with natural magic), but the whole thing sort of took a life of its own. My current thinking is you need all three to properly classify a spell. For instance when Diamondback casts a fireball that might be a hermetic (or possibly wicca?) elemental evocation. Another mage might cast a wall of fire as a conjuration, the difference being that the wall doesn't fizzle out when the mage is distracted. Fey's fire dance would be a fae (or natural magic? this sort of thing is the reason why I go back and and forth on non-human traditions being their own layer) elemental invocation (Tennants description was very non-technical so that sort of thing might be able to made fit in there and it would make sense). Master Zheng would perform taoist alchemic transmutations. Necromancy is both sphere and field because a calling up a departed spirit and putting it in a dead body would be a Hermetic/GOO/whatever necromantic conjuration or invocation (depending on how you do it exactly), while stealing someones life force and putting it into a potion would be a alchemic necromancy. And I just realized that I was being stupid, there was absolutely no reason to make conjuration also a paradigm. Obviously divination has to be moved to fields and Conjure was casting the divination as a conjuration because that's her specialty, while the more normal way is to make it an invocation (which meshes very well with Tennant's description). I was thinking sphere because of the inertia from DnD and because there are things like divinations about fate. But fate magic is about manipulating fate, so there is no pressing reason to classify a divination about fate as fate magic. Similarly Diamondbacks knife spell was a hermetic or wicca cojured illusion, you could probably also evoke an illusion, and a purely mental illusion might be an enchantment instead. Does this approach make enough sense to include it in this wiki? There is some canon evidence for it, like that summonings can be either conjuration or evocation, that making mithril is called both a transmutation and alchemy or the examples above. The only alternatives I can see are to make most things a subcategory of conjuration or to just give up and admit that the various people talking about magic all contradict each other and there is no way to make sense of it. As for the too deep hierarchy, maybe the best approach is to move the whole thing to a separate article a and leave a short summary here? Addiab 09:27, April 29, 2010 (UTC) Um, so the only canon mention of fate magic seems like an example of divination. Should I take that as evidence that the whole spheres/fields/paradigma idea doesn't work and should be scrapped, or that divination is a sub-field of fate magic (or may be just another name?), or that divination is a sphere after all?Addiab 11:31, April 29, 2010 (UTC) Rework classification completely? Angel in Dickinson Cottage part 2 talks about mystical traditions. That seems to be more or less the same thing as what is called paradigma here. Except natural/chaos magic doesn't really fit the term tradition. Should we rename the paradigma section to traditions? And if yes, should chaos/natural magic moved out of there? Other than that, as said repeatedly there isn't all that much support in favor of the spheres/fields split except for supposedly explaining several oddities/redundancies/contradictions, and the fact that it seemed to work initially. Except it doesn't seem to work that well after all, as shown with the conjuration / divination / fate magic problem. Then there's Sympathetic magic, linked here from the laws of magic article, except that there is no sympathetic magic section yet. I guess we could create a sympathetic magic subsection under spheres, but it doesn't fit that terribly well with the other things in there. The spheres section is already pretty far removed from the DnD organization scheme the name is borrowed from, so if we are keeping it around we might want to think about renaming it. Healing magic should also get a section somewhere, but that could fit under fields without any problems. So what I want to ask is: Does the current organization help more than it hinders? Should it be scrapped, and the different types listed without organization into kind of types? Or are there any ideas for a better organization? Maybe keeping paradigma/traditions separate, but merging everything else into fields? Or going back to DnD spheres (and similar words like invocation and transfiguration) = spheres, everything else = fields? (there is some support for adding abjuration which would complete the DnD spheres from the old wiki Goths entry which apparently originally came form the canon bible, no mention in the stories, though.) Addiab 15:26, May 6, 2010 (UTC) Sigh, in addition to the problems above in FED Earth Rebecca makes it sound like summoning, or at least summoning as done by "true summoners" might possibly be a "type of magic" on the same level as "western magic" and "eastern magic". Not that she is at all clear on that, type of magic might simply mean type of magic in the same sense as used in the title of this article. But apparently no one other than me cares about any of this this at all? Or at least enough to voice an opinion of any kind? Addiab 02:10, May 14, 2010 (UTC) Why should we interfere when you are doing so well? :) Actually, I missed however it was decided to use the current classification system, and I don't see that it fits all that well with what is in the stories. However, this is at least organized somehow, and if I had written it, it would probably just be a list of the types of magic that have shown up in the stories, since we haven't seen much classification. The way Ms. Stone talks about it, it seems like western and eastern magic are completely separate. Maybe divide the types by non-human (Sidhe, GOO) magics and human magics, which would then be divided into "Western" and "Eastern" magics? But Fey is obviously being taught magics that are very similar, if not the same, to human magic, so I don't know if that works. Also, I don't know if it would really help with the organization problem. By the way, where does Erebeal magic (from Evil Christmas Part 2) fit into the current system? Oops, didn't sign. Selenae 02:19, May 15, 2010 (UTC) Erebeal magic: probably fields since it seems to be about a type of effect rather than a general way to achieve effects? The current system was just me thinking it made sense and hoping it might explain some things that apparently didn't. I described my thought process above. The problem is that it doesn't really work all that well. If you think it would be better to do away with it completely I'm certainly open to that. I'm not sure how the division you propose is meant, though. Do you mean that transmutation, necromancy, healing, summoning etc would all be assigned to one of those? Wouldn't pretty much everything end up with human western magic then? Or do you just mean the paradigma/traditions part, which would be kept separate from what is now fields and spheres (which would also need to be reorganized)? I wouldn't be happy with voodoo, shamanism and natural magic being assigned to human western magic (or eastern for that matter), and if they are kept separate wouldn't that just mean creating a "human traditions" grouping for everything outside the non-human grouping? Not that I'd necessarily be opposed to that, but it seems a bit superfluous because human would be the default anyway. Addiab 03:16, May 15, 2010 (UTC) Chaos magic I would split up Natural Magic (that which comes instinctively and naturally) from Chaos magick, as the latter is actually a very technical and theory-intensive school of magic. I don't remember seeing any Chaotes at Whateley. Gan Ainm 01:26, May 28, 2010 (UTC) I see your point, but the words chaos magic don't actually appear anywhere in the stories, and the only reason to include them is a forum post by J. G. that among other things calls the kind of magic the Artificers do Chaos magic. In the stories themselves they are called natural magic users. The part about higher level wiz mutants falling into that category is also from that forum post. So either natural magic and chaos magic are the same thing, or Artificers are somehow natural chaos magic users, or we have a contradiction and the stories take precedence over WOG unless they are contradictory themselves. Maybe it would be best to simply remove the Chaos part of the name? But then there isn't really any basis for that part about untrained wiz mutants, except maybe common sense. Addiab 01:54, May 28, 2010 (UTC)